


Cassandra

by misshallery



Category: Sorcery (Video Game), Steve Jackson's Sorcery! - Steve Jackson
Genre: F/M, Future, Gen, Like Angst But More Accepting, foresight, navel gazing, wibbly wobbly timey wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29601876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misshallery/pseuds/misshallery
Summary: Aliizi is a foreseer and this is what she knows.
Relationships: Aliizi/Archmage of Mampang
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	Cassandra

There is surely so little left of the small girl from the Baklands forest in the young woman, the sorceress, Aliizi. How would the Analander even recognise her when Aliizi goes to her, to act out their fate that she has already seen every possibility of? She looks similar on the outside, at least. That will have to do.

It's perhaps a little selfish, but the fate she spends the most time trying to foresee is always her own. She couldn't really claim to _like_ doing it. It's just a deep, unstoppable curiosity that seizes her at all times. Like a bad scratch you always need to itch. Like a lover you can't stop thinking about.

So because she's well versed in the crystals now, she spends a lot of time watching her older self. And the trivial things, those are interesting. What kind of tea does Sorceress Bria like to drink? (One infused with rare herbs you can only pick in the southern Baklands.) How does she wear her hair on a normal day? (Loose, tangled, free.) What does she do for fun? (Not much, cast pointless spells, go for a wander in the hills, and think of ways to playfully torture the Analander on the day that she _finally_ shows up.)

But her fascination with her older self's taste in beverages, hairdos, and hobbies is only a helpful distraction from the real situation. Sometimes she wonders if Bria back looks at Briarpatch, the young woman, the way she looks back at Aliizi, the child. _How could I have been so ignorant to everything that would happen to me? To all the things I wouldn't understand until much later?_

Because what on Earth does she _see_ in him? She must've known what he would do to her, she must've foreseen it because she's foreseeing it right now. But she had gone to the Fortress of Sorcerers, to the Archmage of Mampang. She had still introduced herself, brought her parents who she rescued from Tinpang along, smiled for him and befriended him and trusted him and dedicated herself to him and then _loved_ him.

She dug into their life together through her visions, memories that were hers, but not yet. She watched love, vulnerability, and fragility play out in front of her, and despite her scepticism, there it was within her: a craving for it all to be hers. Aliizi had seen enough to know that she was always doomed in the end, anyway. So she was beginning to understand herself; she had chosen the person who she knew would end her eventually, because it had been good while it lasted.

Does the Analander ever mistake herself for someone who is always doomed? Surely not. Aliizi can feel her marching through the streets of Mampang right now, hood pulled over her face, hand on her sword hilt, her sense of purpose unstoppable. If she saw what Aliizi saw, would it make her braver? More afraid?

It can be frightening too. It isn't always good. One of the first fully formed visions Aliizi saw as a teenager was the one that nearly broke her- instead, it changed her, hardened her for good. The one with the Archmage's throat slit, and the assassin's too, self-inflicted. And the Analander taking the Fortress with burning red resolve, the Crown perched on her head like an evil companion, tapping into the inner corruption that everyone possesses in some volume, making it bolder, more cruel, all-consuming.

Aliizi cannot steer fate. She can only watch. When the time comes, she hopes that she gets to watch one of her favourite visions play out in front of her: the one where the Crown rolls to the Analander's feet, where she grasps it in her hands and snaps it in two like a brittle twig, and suddenly the sun is alive and the people are shining and Aliizi is free to seek her life and death in peace.

Her other favourite vision is the last one she views before she puts on her boots and cloak, before she vanishes out of sight and follows the Analander up the slope and through the citadel to the Throben doors, and watches her open them before revealing herself and letting fate take the reins from there.

He is holding her because she cannot sleep, rocking her like a child and caressing her cheek. She cannot feel physical sensation in a vision, but she imagines it's a cool night, but their breath is warm and they are sharing it. The moonlight is poring over their bed from a tall window, a weak half crescent but so very bright still.

He will kill her one day. He will have her executed in a moment of rage, then he will lock himself in his tower for years, lifetimes, not because he is mourning but because he is _plotting_.

But he will die first. And also last. He will be murdered, slain, abandoned, left to perish all alone. Over and over, and forever.

**Author's Note:**

> So the entire time I was writing this I was like "very few people know this series exists, fewer people are still invested in it, even fewer read fanfiction for it, and a vanishingly small portion of them will have any idea who this story is about or what any of the content I'm referencing is." But well, I don't have New Game+5 in this series for no reason, so here it is. :)


End file.
